Related Resources

At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Documenting the American South

First-Person Narratives of the American South is one component of a growing collection of texts illustrating Southern history, literature, and culture. Other components include:

• North American Slave Narratives
• Library of Southern Literature
• The Southern Homefront, 1861-1865
• The Church in the Southern Black Community   [also available through American Memory]

In American Memory

Several American Memory collections include first-person accounts of life in other regions of the United States and in other periods:

"California as I Saw It:" First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900

Full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California's history through eyewitness accounts covering the decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century.

Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910

A portrait of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works drawn from the Library of Congress's collections.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940

Based on interviews by staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers' Project, this collection includes almost 3,000 drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations of interviewees from twenty-four states.

The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925

This collection includes first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs that capture in words and pictures a distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives

This collection portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories. Among the topics it highlights are the land and its resources, relations with Spain, the competition among political parties, reform efforts, and recollections by veterans of the Spanish-American War.